The 2019 National Recruiting Recap

Alabama was knocked off its perch in the 2018 recruiting world and in this past January’s title game. The Tide got right back up for the 2019 recruiting cycle and dominated (save one program) the rest of the country once again. Yes, the more things change the more they stay the same. That includes the center of recruiting power remaining in the southeastern portion of the United States.

Let’s take a journey through the wider world of national recruiting as the 2019 class comes to a close.

Georgia (and the SEC) Keeping Pace

The Dawgs have nearly dethroned Alabama twice on the field in 2017 and 2018 and took the crown off their head in last year’s recruiting cycle. This year, Georgia couldn’t do the same but weren’t far behind the Tide in 2nd place and finished a good deal away from the 3rd place program while being led by the nation’s top recruit defensive end Nolan Smith from IMG Academy.

Georgia’s class is so good that enough can’t be said how great Alabama’s class is to stay ahead in the top spot. The Tide’s only non-blue chip recruit is their kicker and they signed 10% of all the Top 200 recruits in the country.

T E N P E R C E N T.

How big is the drop from Alabama at #1 and a school like Notre Dame at #15? The Tide have one more Top 200 recruit in their 2019 class (20) than the Irish (19) have in their last 3 classes.

Yes, the SEC continues to dominate recruiting. SB Nation has updated their 4-year recruiting rankings and it’s not pretty for most other conferences. The SEC owns 6 out of the top 8 programs in collecting talent!

Texas vs. A&M

There’s growing interest in the series between Texas and A&M being reignited again as the schools head into their 8th season without meeting on the field. If it were to happen any time soon the talent on the field is sure to be elite.

The Aggies cleaned up in-state with the top two players and 7 of the top 16 Texans, all Top 100 recruits. The Longhorns brought in 11 recruits from the Top 200 and capped off their class with the last-minute transfer of 5-star receiver Bru McCoy who fled the tire-fire that is USC.

Oregon Quietly Impressive

Is it time to buy stock in Mario Cristobal? The Ducks shot up the national rankings finishing an impressive 7th overall this year (their best ever) led by the country’s No. 2 recruit defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux.

Even better for Oregon, they finished 10 and 14 spots ahead of division rivals Washington and Stanford, respectively. The Ducks have recruited strong enough in recent years that they’ve now sneaked past Notre Dame into 13th place in the 4-year rankings.

Clemson Weird

In the past Clemson was known more for small but extremely talented recruiting classes. Coming off their National Championship they’ve signed 29 players but just 13 blue-chips in the mix falling to 10th nationally overall.

The Tigers are losing a lot of their defense and may have smartly decided a quick infusion of bodies was needed. They signed 16 defenders and have welcomed an obscene 17 recruits who have enrolled early.

Ohio State Steps Back (But Not Really)

The Buckeyes aren’t used to being outside the Top 5 nationally, let alone dropping to 14th in the country. In the wake of losing Urban Meyer it would make some sense that they would feel it on the recruiting trail, though.

Still, they signed a trio of 5-stars and their ranking is almost entirely a product of a small 17-man class. Ohio State’s average player rankings is higher than everyone above them in the rankings with the exception of Georgia and Alabama.

Taggart Needs Time

Florida State was hoping for Willie Taggart to build a recruiting machine although they’ll have to apparently wait longer for that to happen as the Seminoles fell to 14th in the rankings for 2019. That includes the country’s 4th best safety Nick Cross who hasn’t signed yet and is being pulled in the direction of Penn State by his parents. Should Cross sign elsewhere, it would drop the Noles class down to 18th nationally.

FSU has also famously not signed a quarterback for the second straight cycle. They now have only James Blackman remaining on scholarship. Good luck!

Losing the Copper State

The country’s top QB prospect, Spencer Rattler, hails from Phoenix but did not sign with either Arizona or Arizona State. Neither did any of the top 14 players in the state. The Wildcats weren’t able to sign any of the top 33 players in-state which is so amazing as to be unbelievable.

Kevin Sumlin–using his contacts from previous jobs–focused on Texas where he signed 8 recruits. Herm Edwards on the other hand focused to the west with 9 recruits from California.

Boiler Up

Purdue is 35th in the latest 4-year recruiting rankings but just finished 25th overall for 2019. Which is to say Jeff Brohm is Doing Good Things™ and has the Boilermakers surging quickly in the Big Ten West division.

Brohm was able to sign the top 2 players in Indiana and both are high 4-star recruits. Finishing up with the 5th best class in the Big Ten behind Michigan, Penn State, Ohio State, and Nebraska is a big deal for Purdue.

On Wisconsin

Don’t sleep on the Badgers who moved up 18 spots in the national rankings from last year to 27th for their top finish in the modern era of recruiting. It was a very top-heavy class for Wisconsin who signed 5-star offensive lineman Logan Brown and high 4-star quarterback Graham Mertz, the latter player being the highest QB ever signed by Wisconsin and the 2019 All-American Bowl Game MVP last month.

Is…the Big Ten West shaping up to be really fun?

Power 5 Worst

Jeff Brohm was rumored to be going home to Louisville after Bobby Petrino was fired by the school in early November. Ultimately, he did not take the job and the Cardinals went through one heck of a transition class dropping to a Power 5 low 73rd overall nationally.

Louisville’s class features only 14 players and a lone blue-chip prospect. This could be a much larger rebuilding project than expected and it’ll be fascinating to see the shape they’re in during the opener with Notre Dame.

LA Nightmare

Things are not going great for college football fans in Los Angeles. That is, unless you live in the City of Angels and don’t root for USC or UCLA.

The Bruins–coming off a solid 19th national class in Chip Kelly’s transitional first year–absolutely bombed out to 44th nationally for 2019. That included just 1 blue-chip recruit, and maybe worst of all, UCLA is going to struggle to get to 75 scholarships for the fall with suspensions and transfers aplenty.

USC re-tooled nearly its entire coaching staff–effectively forcing a transition class upon itself–and in the end gets to keep Clay Helton as head coach for its efforts. They were able to sign 25 players with only 7 blue-chips causing the Trojans class to fall all the way to 20th nationally. In the 4-year recruiting rankings, USC is now 2 spots below Notre Dame.

He just signed with in-state Maryland. #55 overall prospect in the Composite and former ND target, at least before Ohio State/Alabama/etc. started showing interest in him. It’s a tremendous blow to FSU’s class – he was their second-highest ranked recruit, behind #50 CB Akeem Dent, and their only other top 100 recruit.

Continuing the schadenfreude fun, USC’s highest-rated recruit is WR Kyle Ford at #38 overall, four spots below the last five-star slot. That means the Trojans secured their lowest class ranking *and* failed to secure a single five-star for the first time in the modern recruiting era, which is from 2000 forward, and very probably longer than that.

Just hate to see that.

Less schadenfreude-y, because I hate them less with Mora gone, but still remarkable is UCLA’s situation – it was so bad for them that they lost a kid on signing day to Washington. Doesn’t sound terrible, you say? He passed up a scholarship from UCLA to walk on at Washington. Oof.

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3 months ago

Irishchamp23

Surprising that Cross signed with Maryland. He’s 55 and their next top recruit is 224. They are ranked 11 in the Big Ten. I wonder how often a top 100 player signs with a team that is probably going to be on the low end of a conference. If it ever happens it’s gotta be to stay close to home. I guess they’d have a few top Dematha players head there the last few years, but still.

Yeah, I think it’s mostly that he’s from Baltimore. He didn’t even take an OV to Maryland at any point. Locksley is a pretty good recruiter and also happens to be a DMV guy himself who is very popular with high school coaches there. I’m sure he sold Cross on the “I’m bringing Alabama success to College Park” idea and that combined with the comfort of staying home sealed it.

They’ve actually had four Composite five-stars in the modern era, which is more than I would’ve expected, but then all four were from Maryland, so… The four were LB Wesley Jefferson (2003 #6 overall), Stefon Diggs (2012 #8), DE Melvin Alaeze (2005 #20), and OT Damian Prince (2014 #28). Diggs went to Our Lady of Good Counsel, Sam Mustipher’s school. Cross is the highest-ranked DeMatha kid they’ve signed.

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3 months ago

Irishchamp23

Yea I think he’s even from Hyattsville which is where Dematha is. And this is like literally down the street from UMD.

It’s a shame ND couldn’t jump back into it at the end but I don’t know how much we were ever in it.

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3 months ago

hooks orpik

And Locksley/UMD picked up DeMatha’s coach to be their RB coach. I’m sure not for this specific recruitment but the idea is to try and sink in deep and keep a lot of the DMV talent at Maryland, instead of Penn State, Virginia Tech, Ohio State, Florida where it seems to escape to.

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3 months ago

Russell Knox

I loved this article Eric. Thanks. We need to track this every year.

It was interesting how he weighted the class years. I guess it makes sense.but I’m not a numbers guy.

I have to admit. I’m pressing the panic button a bit on recruiting rankings. At the beginning of the Kelly Tenure, we were in the top 10 using a five year moving average. Now things are breaking down. I realize that with all the turnover, your rankings in any given year are not perfectly correlated with the talent on the roster. For example, we were in the top 10 team talent this year…

But I think it’s hard to argue that non-OL offensive recruiting is as good as it used to be. I will be alarmed if that doesn’t improve this year.

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3 months ago

Russell Knox

I don’t see it that way. Defensive recruiting is much better than it was. Jurk and Pyne, QB is doing well. TE and OL is going strong. Reciever might be a little bit weaker. The only position i see that is noticeably weaker is RB. Arguably one of the least important offensive pieces in the modern offense.

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3 months ago

tlndma

RB, “Arguably one of the least important offensive pieces in the modern offense.” More so in the Pro’s I’d say.

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3 months ago

Russell Knox

Fair enough. Certainly not as big as ten years ago.

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3 months ago

hooks orpik

Yeah, it’s kind of weird, idk why but I feel pretty good about the recruiting right now as any point in the Kelly era, especially all the defensive players in the 2018 and 2019 classes.

I really think the big thing is hitting on QB’s and then all the rest falls in place. For all Weis’ faults, getting elite QBs like Clausen and (in theory a 5*) in Crist was really good and helped attract more talent, as well as Quinn’s development.

Kelly it seems like has either had placeholder types (Rees, Kizer and dare I say Book) and his big QBs haven’t panned out or inspired confidence (Wimbush, Zaire, Golson).

So to me the next step is getting a Jurkovec/Pyne type that can lead an explosive offense and stretch the field vertically and attract more talent. I’m sure they hoped Wimbush was the guy and had the pedigree, so it’s definitely easier said than done.

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3 months ago

kiwifan

How do we know Jurkovec and Pyne can do that, since neither has played a meaningful cfb down?

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3 months ago

Irishchamp23

I don’t think he is saying we do know. But the first step to getting an elite QB is recruiting one that is highly ranked. Then the next step is getting that highly ranked QB to play well. His point was just if you have an elite QB then everything else is easier.

Yup, 2020 is going to be a major data point on the ceiling of recruiting.

Can we grab a few elite of elite prospects? And if not, can we build a class largely composed of mid-to-high 4-stars with very little 3-stars?

For 2019, if we replaced Olmstead, Hart, and Spears with Harry Miller, Kyle Ford, and Travon Walker (all 0.980+ recruits) the class ranking would’ve moved from 15th to 6th nationally. But, you have to get the big boys!

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3 months ago

kiwifan

I think that’s the biggest issue for us. We don’t get the true elite of elites anymore.